Clever Ruses and Chocolate Cream Pie
by Rhianwen
Summary: There are many men out there who can hold their alcohol. Unfortunately for Wendy, Joker is not one of them.


Clever Ruses and Chocolate Cream Pie

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Summary: There are plenty of men out there who can hold their alcohol. Unfortunately for Wendy, Joker is not one of them.

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Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, and I'm pretty sure none of them like me after this one.

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"So, what do you think?"

Wendy smiled a very forced smile in response to Joker's hopeful, beaming, if slightly unsteady one. How exactly was one to politely tell their boss that he was out of his mind, even when taking the current situation into account?

"Well," she began finally, freezing and then shifting uncomfortably as he tipped forward and then snuggled happily against her shoulder and began to play with her hair. She took a moment to rescue the precariously tipping bottle of whisky from his other hand and set it on the side table next to the couch before continuing. "I think the plan is good as it is. After all, if Mr. Gentleman himself came up with it--"

"But, Wendy, just think of how much simpler this will be! We could do it tomorrow, and be finished in time to take Mr. Gentleman to someplace with an Earlybird Special. He'll be wanting to get to sleep early; he _is_ awfully old, you know," he finished very solemnly.

"Y-yes, it would certainly save time – if it worked. But to be honest, sir, trying to bribe Mr. Gentleman into coming back by rounding up the books and dangling some chocolate cream pie temptingly in front of them sounds a little too _easy_."

Joker lifted his head from the curve between her neck and shoulder, pushed himself upright after a few failed attempts to do so, and shot her a very serious look.

"He likes chocolate cream pie."

"I-I'm sure he does," she said, hesitantly patting his arm. "All the same, I think the original plan is probably the most advisable way to go."

"I'm tired of the original plan," he harrumphed, crossing his arms as his expression shifted to something dangerously close to a pout. "I've spent half my bloody life with that plan."

_I wonder,_ Wendy mused, glancing at the bottle on the side table, _if drinking some of that myself would get rid of these urges to take blackmail photos, or if it would make them worse. I wouldn't have to drive home after, or take a cab, since he conveniently chose my apartment to get drunk at. The next time he decides to acquire a violent cold and stubbornly deny its existence, he can just suffer on his own - I will never, ever be foolish enough to offer tea and whisky again._

"Tell me one thing wrong with this new plan," Joker was meanwhile commanding.

"Only one, then?" she murmured, resting her chin in her hand. "Well, I suppose the first problem would be that we don't actually have all seven of the Gentleman books yet. We're still missing The Book of the All-Seeing Eye."

Joker's smug smile wilted a little.

"Oh, yes; there is that, I suppose. Stupid Agent Paper, ruining our box set like that," he finished in a resentful mutter. Then he brightened. "Well, we can simply have some glasses made!"

Wendy stared at him blankly.

"Glasses?"

"Of course! Since we're missing The Book of the All-Seeing Eye, Mr. Gentleman's eyes won't be all-seeing. But we can fix the problem right up with a nice pair of glasses. To be honest," he continued, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "I think that's why Yomiko took it."

"So that she could stop wearing glasses," Wendy finished flatly.

"Yes," he confirmed.

"She went to all that trouble, flew to London, and burned down the library, just so she could stop wearing glasses?"

"Yes."

"And she just took Nancy Makuhari with her as a cover for her real scheme of vision correction?"

Joker sat back against the cushions of the couch, stunned by this great revelation.

"I hadn't considered that," he admitted, sounding very impressed indeed. "Excellent job, Wendy."

"Er, thank-you," she sighed. "Although, I have to ask if you've considered why on earth Yomiko wouldn't just go have laser eye surgery instead of going to the trouble of stealing The Book of the All-Seeing Eye and then going into hiding."

"Too expensive," he scoffed. "We paid her even less than we pay you."

"Right," she grumbled. "If you paid me any less, I might have blown up the library, too."

"Well, then, we'll have to make sure we pay you well," Joker said. "We don't want to have to rebuild the place again, and have you make off with The Book of the Pulsing Flesh."

"Why do you immediately assume I'd take that one?" she demanded, faintly annoyed, before the utter silliness of arguing with a drunk man occurred to her. Then she sighed. "Mr. Joker, do you think that maybe you should go to bed?"

"Is that an invitation?" he asked with a wicked smile.

"Dammit," she whimpered. "He's drunk...must remember that he's drunk...cannot take advantage of Mr. Joker while he's drunk...no matter how long it's been since my last date, or how ready I am to drag the first man I see on the street up to my room…cannot take advantage of my poor, helpless, drunken boss..." She smiled up at him kindly, but inexorably. "No, it isn't. But I think you ought to sleep this off."

"Wendy," he said sternly. "Are you trying to change the subject?"

She drooped forward despairingly and valiantly resisted the urge to whine.

"What subject?"

"Our new plan to revive Mr. Gentleman more efficiently, of course!"

"I think we should talk more about it tomorrow," she said firmly, standing and taking his arm to help him up. "We can ask everyone else what they think of it, and proceed accordingly."

"I don't want to ask them," he pouted, tugging his arm back surprisingly firmly, and so suddenly that Wendy lost her balance and stumbled, ultimately ending up in his lap. He grinned. "Oh! Hello, there."

"Yes, hello," she said through gritted teeth, trying to pull away despite his arms around her waist, pinning her firmly in place. "Now, why don't you want to ask everyone else?"

"I like your opinion best."

_He's drunk...it doesn't mean anything if he says it while he's drunk...in fact, it probably doesn't mean much if he says it while he's sober, either, the bloody liar._

"Why do you like my opinion best?" she finally asked aloud, biting back a good deal of resentment.

"Because," he replied, hugging her tightly, "you always tell me I'm right."

"Glad to help," she sighed, relaxing against him and resisting the urge to laugh. "Couldn't be because I'm naturally brilliant, or because of my abnormally high level of common sense."

"No, you're right," he agreed, nuzzling the side of her neck. "But you don't need common sense with a body like that."

She looked pointedly away, furious and yet blushing faintly, as he pushed her back slightly and took a moment to stare, and then nod appreciatively.

"Yes, very nice."

_He's drunk...it doesn't mean anything if he's drunk...that's also why you are inot_ going to kill him for that little remark about your common sense.../i

"I'm home," a quiet, childlike voice called from the front entry.

Seconds later, Junior wandered into the living room, and stopped dead at the curious sight of Mr. Carpenter enthusiastically cuddling a slightly less enthusiastic and vaguely disgruntled-looking Wendy.

"Hello, Junior," that same young woman greeted, as sincerely glad to see him as he had ever heard her. "Would you do me a favour, and help me get him to bed?"

"Is that the telephone?" Junior wondered aloud, before turning abruptly, and wandering very quickly toward Wendy's home office and the notably silent telephone.

"You know, by 'help me get him to bed', I didn't mean 'scurry quickly from the room,'" Wendy called after him resentfully.

"Oh, let him go," Joker said with a good-natured chuckle, before grinning again. "Now, you were in the process of taking me to bed with you?"

"No," she replied, not nearly as horrified as she knew she ought to be and putting this resolutely up to her sad lack of a social life for the last five years.

_Well, if he's drunk, at least he wouldn't remember it tomorrow._

Now quite horrified, but by her own line of reasoning, she shoved away from him suddenly and firmly enough to send herself tumbling to the floor, unfortunately neglecting to release his arm in time, and dragging him down after her.

"Well, hello again," he greeted suggestively as he landed squarely on top of her in the space between the couch and the coffee table. "You'll take any excuse today, won't you? Honestly, Wendy, I think you're drunk.

"No, I'm," she told him with a deliberate sort of calm that a more alert man might have recognized as dangerous. "I am, however, trying to get you, who _are_ drunk, safely to bed and to sleep before you hurt yourself."

"This is nice," he commented, resting his cheek against something warm and pillowesque. "Let's stay here."

"No, let's not," she said rather desperately, trying and failing to shove him off. "Let's take you to bed, and then let's get me some blankets so that I can at least try to make some pretence at sleep on this damned couch."

"But I like it here," he protested sadly.

"You're not the one bumping your head against the coffee table every time you move," she grumbled.

"You're pretty," he said, beaming up at her briefly, before nuzzling that same rather pillowesque area a bit and playing with her hair. "You have pretty hair. And these are awfully nice, too," he added, kissing one of his makeshift pillows lightly.

"I think that was the doorbell," Junior commented, once again back-pedalling from the room. "I'll go answer it."

"You little liar!" Wendy called after him, trying again to squirm away as she noted in horror that the man cuddling blissfully away was beginning to drool ever so slightly. "We don't even have a doorbell!"

"Don't have a doorbell?" that same blissfully cuddly man echoed, aghast, looking up abruptly. "Ouch!" he intoned sadly as his head connected with the coffee table.

She sighed as he glared at the offending structure of glass and wood, and sternly demanded an apology.

"But honestly, Wendy, everyone needs a doorbell," Joker continued once the coffee table had been thoroughly chastened.

"Please go to sleep," she begged, by now a mere step away from whining.

"Right," he agreed. "Time for bed, then." He looked around curiously. "Do I live here now?"

"Of course you don't," Junior replied severely from the doorway, before looking nervously at Wendy. "He doesn't, right?"

"No, thank God, he doesn't," Wendy replied through gritted teeth. "He's only staying here tonight because I was abysmally foolish enough to offer him tea and whisky for his cold. Unfortunately, he bypassed the tea and went straight to the whisky, so not only am I fresh out and unable to deal with this as I would really like to, but he is currently unable to locate so much as his left elbow, and I feel a little guilty sending him home alone in a cab."

"Why don't you drive him?"

"Why don't _you_ drive him?"

"I can't drive yet."

"Right; I keep forgetting," she said sheepishly. "And I can't drive him myself because I am currently too _tired_ to locate _my_ left elbow."

Junior nodded, then sent her an imploring look.

"Please don't put him in my room."

"Why would I want to sleep in your room?" Joker scoffed. "Wendy's taking me to her room. And you know what that means, eh?"

He chuckled wickedly, and attempted to nudge the boy playfully in the ribs, only to frown in distinct annoyance when his elbow passed harmlessly through Junior.

"Stop that," he commanded, annoyed, as Junior phased through him and hurried to the other side of the room. "Get back here and let me nudge you!"

"Let's just go to bed," Wendy implored wearily.

Joker grinned.

"Right; off we go, then."

He went off into another wicked chuckle, and, after fighting off the urge to say something distinctly mean, Wendy steered him toward the hallway, and cackled silently as he walked directly into the wall.

"Oh, goodness, I'm sorry about that!" she exclaimed.

"What kind of a place is that for a wall?" Joker demanded angrily.

"I wonder if that offer to go be Michelle's new sister still stands," Junior mused as he made his way quickly to his own room, vowing not to leave again for the rest of the night, unless it was to flee the apartment in utter terror, depending on what sort of noises he heard drifting through the wall from the bedroom next door.

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"All settled in, then?" Wendy asked with an artificial brightness that barely concealed a rising urge to kill anything that might foolishly present itself.

He nodded, and she bit back the urge to laugh as he peered at her over the top of the quilt, only his eyes and nose visible.

"Sure you don't want to share, though? Still plenty of room. And I don't mind, really," he added in a tone that implied that he was yet again doing that grin that she was coming to hate. Or love. She wasn't really sure.

"It's not professional!" she near-wailed. "If I did, you'd be angry tomorrow, and I'd be embarrassed, even if I would be able to avoid destroying every single one of my joints on the most uncomfortable couch ever made, and getting a huge headache, and probably three hours of sleep, and being impossible to work with tomorrow anyway, and you being angry about that, and...and...and...alright, then," she finished, already working at the buttons on her blouse and pulling some pyjamas from the top drawer of her dresser.

When she noticed the captive audience of two intent eyes and a wide grin obscured by the blankets of the bed, she glared at him.

"Mr. Joker, could you look away, please?"

"Of course," he agreed kindly, making no move to do so.

"Oh, never mind," she huffed, hurrying into the adjoining washroom in something that came dangerously close to a stomp.

"I'll be waiting," he called.

"I'll be sleeping in the bathtub," she called back before shutting the door with an emphatic bang.

"Well, that's silly," she heard him comment from the bedroom. "You'll get all wet!"

"Seems a small price to pay at the moment," she muttered, tugging on the pyjama pants and slipping into the shirt. "Alright," she added, loud enough for him to hear. "I'll come out, if you promise to be good and go straight to sleep. No talking."

"We don't have to _talk_," he called back, still with that irritating, adorable grin in his voice.

"And if you make any move to do what you're thinking about now, _you'll_ be sleeping in the bathtub."

"Will you come, too?"

"ARRRGH!" Wendy said calmly, slamming her head three times against the wall with equal calmness.

"Do your icky grown-up things more quietly!" a childlike voice called from the room next door. "Some of us are trying to sleep!"

"Sorry, Junior," Wendy called back, before turning to glare at her boss, who was holding up the covers on the other side of the bed and smiling a beckoning smile. "Stop that, and go to sleep!"

"Come keep me company?"

She paused for a moment, her eyes flickering between that damned little grin that her fingers were tingling to wipe off his face after first balling into a tight fist, and the incredibly inviting nest of pillows and blankets.

Back to him.

Back to the bed.

"Alright," she finally said, exasperated, as she started quickly forward. "But you're to go quickly and properly to sleep, understand? You'll feel miserable enough tomorrow even if you get enough rest."

When no response was forthcoming, she looked curiously at the other side of the bed.

"Well," she sighed, not bothering to fight back a fond smile as he snuggled his pillow happily, clearly dead to the world. "I suppose I only had to ask."

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This whole concept of sunlight, Joker decided with a silent groan as his head gave a painful thud of agreement, had to be eliminated. As soon as they succeeded in bringing back Mr. Gentleman, he would speak to him about it.

Why on earth did that thought give him a craving for chocolate cream pie?

_I remember feeling a little under the weather,_ he thought, trying to sit up and then falling back against the pillow and recalling that these things were not to be rushed. _Wendy was going to give me something for it. Did she? I think so. Good God, what on earth did she give me?_

It was rather funny that, just as this question meandered through his mind, he turned onto his side, only to be greeted with a sight that made him repeat the question, and more fervently. And then to add a second one.

_Was this all a ruse, to lower my resistance so that she could haul me off to bed and take advantage of me?!_

Then, after pondering this for a moment, he took the opportunity to admire the smooth, slightly tanned skin exposed by her pyjama shirt, which had contrived to unbutton itself during the night. Incidentally, he also took that moment to stonily ignore the fact that, given the presence of pyjamas at all, the possibility that he was considering was incredibly unlikely.

_Hmm. Well, if she has, it's not a big problem. Rather wish I'd been enough in my right mind to remember it, but there's always next time, I suppose._

Nevertheless, the fact still remained that, given the blackmail photos of the last time he had gotten drunk before this, his secretary had seen him in not one, but several absurd and embarrassing positions.

Who knew what sort of strain that could put on her current unwavering respect for him as the upholder of the shining goals and ideals she'd dedicated her life to? What sort of upholder got drunk and made an ass of himself?

_Ah, well,_ he thought indifferently, pulling the sleeping woman against him and absently trailing one hand over her stomach as he brushed a light kiss against the back of her neck. _If there's time, I'll have them rewrite her memory, so that she recalls being the one to get drunk instead of me._

Yes, that would work beautifully. With such an embarrassing evening as he planned to fully enjoy inventing for her – complete with public disrobing – she would be only too glad to never bring it up again.

In the meantime, though, he reflected plaintively as his head gave another painful thud, he was beginning to recall why he didn't hold with this "getting drunk" nonsense anymore.

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End Notes: Yes. I am firmly of the belief that Joker cannot hold his alcohol. And that he's at his best when he's being humiliated by bad fan authors. Which is where I come in. Go me!


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